Joe Biden Is the President of the United States, He Is Not an Innocent Bystander

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Monday, November 07, 2022

 

Even now, the day before the midterms, the New York Times cannot help but cast Joe Biden as an unfortunate bystander to his own presidency. Here’s Peter Baker, in a piece titled, “As Midterms Near, Biden Faces a Nation as Polarized as Ever”:

 

President Biden had hoped to preside over a moment of reconciliation after the turmoil of the Trump years. But the fever of polarizing politics has not broken ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections.

 

Oh, “the fever of polarizing politics” didn’t break, you say? Could that have anything to do with Joe Biden, who has now been president for two years? Apparently not:

 

And so these are frustrating, even perplexing times for Mr. Biden, who according to confidants had expected the fever of polarizing politics to have broken by now and was surprised that it had not. The presidency he envisioned, one where he presided over a moment of reconciliation, is not the presidency he has gotten. He thought that if he could simply govern well, everything would work out, which in hindsight strikes some around him as shockingly naïve if somewhat endearing.

 

He had “expected the fever of polarizing politics to have broken by now.” “The presidency he envisioned, one where he presided over a moment of reconciliation, is not the presidency he has gotten.” “He thought that if he could simply govern well, everything would work out.”

 

The assumptions here are astonishing and infuriating. The first assumption is that Joe Biden has had nothing to do with our “polarizing politics.” This is false. The second assumption is that Joe Biden could preside “over a moment of reconciliation” while advancing a destructive partisan agenda, while ignoring the issues voters care about, and while accusing the other party of being “semi-fascist.” That is impossible. The third assumption is that Joe Biden has “governed well.” He has not.

 

Given how fervently Americans disagree with one another at present, it was always unlikely that the mere election of Joe Biden would lead to a period of national unity. But Biden’s behavior — yes, his behavior, not other people’s — has rendered the idea risible. We are talking here about a president who has repeatedly downplayed, rejected, and ignored the biggest issues facing the United States — inflation, crime, and energy — while mawkishly claiming to have a unique insight into voters’ concerns. We are talking here about a president whose first major act was to sign a partisan bill that pushed inflation to record levels, and whose most recent major act was to sign a partisan bill that cynically pretended to address the considerable damage caused by the first. We are talking here about a president whose mismanagement of the withdrawal from Afghanistan will be taught for decades to come as the perfect example of what not to do in foreign affairs. We are talking here about a president who has cast modest and popular reforms to state election-law as “Jim Crow,” “Jim Crow 2.0,” and “Jim Eagle”; who has talked about pro-lifers as if they were the enemies of democracy; and who simply cannot stop lying each and every time he opens his mouth.

 

As for this?:

 

“In the old days, when I was a United States senator, we’d argue like hell with one another, disagree fundamentally, and go down to the Senate dining room and have lunch together,” Mr. Biden reflected to an audience in San Diego last week. “Because we disagreed on the issues, but we agreed on the notion that the institutions matter.”

 

Is Biden out of his mind? These are the reflections of a guy who just tried to illegally spend a trillion dollars without Congress. They’re the reflections of a guy who was told by the Supreme Court that he was not allowed to issue another eviction moratorium without Congress, and who then did it anyway to buy some time. They’re the reflections of a guy who spent five decades defending the Senate filibuster, and then abandoned it the moment it got in the way of his agenda. They’re the reflections of a guy who could not bring himself to say, while running for president, that court-packing was a bad idea, and who has developed the alarming habit of engaging in knowingly illegal behavior and then blaming the courts and the public for having noticed. “We agreed on the notion that the institutions matter,” Biden says. Who is the “we,” exactly?

 

Biden’s world seems to be one in which he and his party are paragons of virtue, moderation, and calm, and in which everyone who disagrees with them — including the voters — are extreme bomb-throwers set on thwarting America’s inevitable return to harmony. Everything Biden does is terrific; it’s the nation that is in turmoil. Well, unfortunately for Biden, the nation gets a say, too.